a brilliant front page from the Daily Mirror, one of the UK's best selling
papers, on Dubya's oil-driven vision on Iraq, here:
http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/mirror/jan2003/3/4/0007BF80-30AC-1E19-B07C80BFB6FA0000.jpg
if unclear, see: http://www.whoseflorida.com/images/imagemapi.jpg

TUESDAY 7th Januray at 8pm, programme with the Ignacio Chapela story
and more. Repeated on Sunday the 12th of January at 5pm. The next one,
about farmers and the next generation of GM, goes out on the 14th, and
is repeated on the 19th, same times. According to the Radio Times, "A scientist
fears he's going to be thrown out of a 12th-floor window. Pro-labelling
grass-roots activists are defeated by a multi-million dollar campaign.
Countries are bullied into dropping legislation. That's just some of the
news from the genetically modified food battle. In the first of two programmes,
Richard Hollingham asks what's really going on behind the scenes of the
GM food industry".

Sir: The Environment Minister, Michael Meacher, tells us that the findings
of widespread and irreversible contamination of oilseed rape crops and
related weeds with artificial DNA is information which has been known since
the early 1990s (report, 31 December). If this has been known for over
a decade, the Government has been deliberately contaminating our environment
throughout the Farm Scale Evaluations of GM crops.

The current concern over GM contamination has centred around the presence
in the trial crops of herbicide tolerance genes causing increasing weed
control problems in Canada. However, GM oilseed rape also contains a gene
for the enzyme barnase which destroys living cells. It would be unfortunate
indeed if this particular gene were to pop up on a microbial pathogen.
When it does, can we sue the Government?

JOANNA CLARKE
Glasgow

***

3.UK Supermarkets maintain strict GM-free policy for
2003

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - News from gmfoodnews.com
6 January 2003

gmfoodnews.com has completed its annual survey of UK supermarkets for
their position on genetically modified (GM) food and ingredients for 2003.

The results show that opposition to GM foods is as strong as it was
in 1999, when supermarkets removed GM foods and ingredients from their
shelves. Just as in 1999, no UK supermarket includes GM food or ingredients
in their own-brand products. Increasingly, supermarkets are also specifying
GM-free feed for animals producing their meat, milk and eggs.

Supermarkets maintain this position because of the continued rejection
by consumers of GM foods. Consumers believe that GM foods are unsafe, untested
and may cause environmental damage.

When asked specifically about GM cottonseed oil, which has recently
been approved by the UK ACNFP [1, 2], supermarkets stated that they will
not be allowing this ingredient in their products.

For more information about the issues with GM crops and GM food, see
http://www.gmfoodnews.com/gmwrong.html

The views of each of the supermarkets can be seen in the summary below:

Co-op

"No Co-op Brand products will be made using any genetically modified
ingredient."